Yeah, I get it. Thanks for elevating the discourse. Wonderful insights you're bringing.

I've never mentioned Lovecraft.

I think it's going to be discovered that the cult has tentacles everywhere; in the churches, in the schools, in the government, in the police force. Tuttle himself is probably very powerful and influential, but there are many more just like him. He may die, but the cult doesn't die with him. It's the flat circle…

I recall that the girl that tipped them off to the bunny ranch had black stars tattooed on her neck, for whatever that's worth.

Yes, please do spell it out because it doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Perhaps he realized Ledoux was right.

Sure is an odd coincidence that the paintings surfaced in the preacher's burnt-out church and the governor's foundation's abandoned school, isn't it?

Exactly. I'm thinking the detectives are just useful idiots carrying out marching orders. They see only the surface, not the deeper layers that Cohle penetrates. They accuse Cohle of steering the investigation where he wanted it to go, perhaps not realizing that they themselves are being steered.

I think the Yellow King is more a concept than a person. Remember how Dory Lange mentions seeing him in her journal, but it was all incoherent, drug-induced ramblings? I understand that as her finally embracing the cult's beliefs under the influence of LSD. It's the flat circle — it will keep happening again and again…

Yes!

Probably both. Remember that the captive girl had not yet been reported missing… or had she? What if it was "made in error"?

It reminds me of Camus' Myth of Sysiphus, how we have to come to terms with the boulder constantly rolling back down the hill. It's like the flat circle Ledoux tells him about — it's going to happen again and again. I think he's still working the case on his own, but if he did truly retire to that lifestyle — maybe…

But could he afford to have Ginger squeal about the off-book drug raid in a plea bargain if he ever were caught? He did mention that he was "tied up in a ditch", after all…

And this is foreshadowed when Ledoux tells Cohle that he'll do this again, and says it's all a flat circle. Cohle dismisses it as Nietzsche BS right before Ledoux's head is splattered, but years later is matter-of-factly explaining this same theory to the detectives. He's come to know that Ledoux was right.

Yes, it seems to me that's where this is headed. This is the moral dilemma: does he jeopardize his career, his reputation, his family — everything — to save a guy he's always been at odds with, and frankly hasn't even seen over the last decade? I think there's possibly enough circumstantial, incriminating evidence in…

This is the second time during these interviews he's mentioned his inattention to the family, and how the answer was right under his nose but he was focused on the wrong thing. I suspect he's come to learn that his daughter was abused by the cult, and realizes in hindsight that had he dug deeper on the disturbing…

And that rambling monologue — i.e. you'll do this again, the flat circle — is the same thing Cohle is later explaining to the detectives.

Not sure where he would've found the time between the drinking and carousing. The killer was meticulous and calculating; Marty drives over tri-cycles and bashes in doors.

I'm just now re-watching the 11pm replay and the thing that jumps out at me the second time around is how Ledoux tells Cohle that he'll do this again, how this is all a flat circle. Cohle dismisses it as some Nietzche BS, but it's the same thing he is explaining to the detectives years later. Obviously it stuck in his…

For what it's worth, this is how I took it. Especially since he seemed to be getting a perverse thrill out of banging him around the backseat on the hairpin turns. He had plenty of reasons to keep him quiet anyway, considering the off-the-book debacle from last week, the cocaine he smuggled from the evidence locker,…